Category Archives: Technology and Society

Space, Technology and Society

“Snarkyboy” Persists

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In a follow-up to the original Orion worship post:

The Saturn V, the biggest thing we’ve ever launched (just go with me here) weighed in at 6,699,000 lbs, or 3,350 tons, and managed to put a measly 100,000 lbs (50 tons) into lunar orbit.

So lets pretend we want to build a classic L5 space colony. How big does it have to be?

Sorry, but we’re not going to “go with you there.”

This is an inappropriate methodology, and the assumptions here are completely nonsensical. The problem has nothing to do with scaling Saturn Vs, and no one in their right mind ever thought that a “classic L5 space colony” would be built completely out of materials launched from the planet.

There is no good reason that we can’t have launch costs of less than a hundred dollars a pound with chemical rockets, and give rides to millions of pounds of passengers and cargo. All that is needed is to make the investment into space transports, and set multiple teams of engineers loose on the problem, something that we have not done to date.

The cargo would be used to bootstrap production facilities for extraterrestrial resources, with high-value/pound payloads (i.e., electronics) coming up from earth. We do not need Orion to build space colonies. We need a lot of other things, but not that.

Philosophy, Science And Society, Technology and Society

An Effective Alzheimers Treatment?

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Let’s hope so. Alzheimers is, to me, one of the worst diseases, because it steals not just your body, but your mind, to the point that you’re essentially dead while the empty husk metabolizes on. If it’s actually possible to reverse the progress of the disease, that’s huge news. But I wonder if in doing so, you’ve still lost some irretrievable memories? And if so, who are you?

Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Space History, Technology and Society

If We Can Put A Man On The Moon…

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…why can’t we kick the fossil fuel habit? Well, we can, but not the way we put a man on the moon, and certainly not within a decade. On the thirty-ninth anniversary of the first landing, I explain.

[Afternoon update]

It’s interesting to note that the original landing was on a Sunday as well. I don’t know how many of the anniversaries have fallen on a Sunday, but I would guess five or so. It’s not too late to plan to commemorate the event with a ceremony at dinner tonight, with friends and family. Also, a collection of remembrances here. If you’re old enough to remember it yourself, you might want to add one.

Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

The End Of The World

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Ron Bailey reports.

Well, OK, it’s just a conference on the subject. Which isn’t as interesting, but a lot less scary.

[Saturday morning update]

We have met the enemy, and he is us:

“All of the biggest risks, the existential risks are seen to be anthropogenic, that is, they originate from human beings.”

All the more reason to get some eggs into baskets other than this one. Also, the rise (again) of the neo-Malthusians. It’s hard to keep them down for long, even though so far, they’ve predicted about five out of the last zero world overpopulation crises.

Technology and Society

Empirical Evidence At The Nanoscale

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This is pretty damned cool:

Chan said the experiment shows that it is not possible to simply add the force on the constituent solid parts of the plate — in this case, the tines — to arrive at the total force. Rather, he said, “the force actually depends on the geometry of the object.”

“Until now, no significant or nontrivial corrections to the Casimir force due to boundary conditions have been observed experimentally,” wrote Lamoreaux, now at Yale University, in a commentary accompanying publication of the paper.

I don’t know what it means for the singularity, but molecular manufacturing seems to be moving along nicely. Tony Snow’s death was sobering for me, because we were very close to the same age. Fortunately, I don’t have the genetic time bomb that he did, though my family’s heart history is worrisome. All I can do is do what I can do, and hope that things will come along.